The Mercy Room by Gilles Rozier;  fiction, Little, Brown and Company,  2006, 156 pages, $22.95

By Donald H. Harrison

I would not be surprised if someday novelist Gilles Rozier tells an interviewer that annoying his readers was exactly what he set out to do in this novel about a secret relationship in France between Herman, a Jewish man hiding in the cellar, and the androgynous narrator who is his  rescuer/ captor.  It is to make readers think, bien sûr.

There is much we don't know about the narrator, who is the principal character in the novel yet whose name is never given.  Like "Pat" in the old Saturday Night Live bits, we can't be certain if the person telling us the story is a he or a she. No doubt, we are supposed to conclude that the lessons of the story are equally valid regardless of his/her gender and, from that observation, draw the appropriate conclusions.

If that is all that Rozier really wants to impart, then his strategy was successful.  If, however, he wants readers to pay close attention to other themes in the novel, then the "guessing game" aspect of his story may prove a distraction. Instead of absorbing information, readers may have the tendency to zoom past those passages that offer no clues to his/her sexual identity.

Whoever s/he is, s/he had an unsuccessful marriage of years standing that had remained unconsecrated until his/her spouse killed him/herself.  Because he/she was the local teacher of German, the Gestapo compelled him/ her to translate certain documents into French for the local populace.  One day, s/he decides to escort a tall Jewish man from the headquarters and hide him in the secret room in his/her cellar where it had been his/ her habit to read the banned German-language books of Jewish authors.  His/her house had a certain protected status because his/her spoiled younger sister engaged in enthusiastic sex upstairs on a near daily basis  with a high-ranking Nazi officer.

So, while the French were willing collaborators upstairs, they were defying the Nazis' downstairs. We get that.  But the motives of the narrator are almost as ambiguous as his/her identity. Rozier's style mimics the flat, frequently detached voice of  Albert Camus in a novel like The Stranger in which that narrator tells us, "Mother died today, or perhaps it was yesterday..." 

Through considerable planning, s/he recovers a volume of Heinrich Heine's banned poetry that Herman had kept secreted in his boarding house room before his arrest by the Nazis. The book is in Yiddish, but as s/he knows Heine's poetry in German it becomes his/her bridge to Yiddish culture—once s/he figures out how to transliterate the Hebrew alphabet and to read the book from right to left..  

His/her gesture results in Herman having passionate sex with him/her—sex that becomes nearly as frequent and consuming as that which occurs upstairs, albeit on a different time schedule and far more quiet. S/he begins to play control games with his/her lover to increase his dependence on him/her.  S/he routinely filters news of the outside world as s/he deems appropriate.

The book starts with the narrator listening to Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden by Robert Schumann in order to stimulate his/her memory.  Rozier, director of the Center for Yiddish Culture, provides three translations of  Heine's underlying poem of "love and nostalgia, a man leaving his birthplace and the girl he loves."

In Yiddish:
shene vig fun meyne leyden
shene kvr fun meyn ruh
shene shtodt, ikh muz zikh sheyden—
zey gesund! vinsh ikh dir tsu.

In German:
Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden
Schöne Grabmal meiner Ruh,
Schöne Stadt, wir müssen scheiden
Lebe wohl! Ruf'ich dir zu.

In English 
Fairest cradle of my sorrow
Fairest tombstone of my peace,
City fair, we part tomorrow,
Adieu, I cry without surcease.

We learn that s/he identifies the song with Hans-Joachim, a platonic friend s/he had pined for while they were students during the Weimar Republic days.  He was the "fairest cradle of my sorrows...the fairest tombstone of my peace...." yet, "I had never even wished Hans-Joachim good luck.  Our correspondence foundered in the whirlpools of the 1930s, and I don't know what became of him." 

Hans-Joachim's last name was Friedberg, and, s/he just had assumed that he was an Aryan, but, it dawned on him/ her,  with a surname like Friedberg, maybe, like Herman, Hans-Joachim was a Jew. So, what did that make Herman?  A love substitute for Hans-Joachim, who could be kept to him/herself?  Or a person upon whom s/he could  exact some psychological revenge because Hans-Joachim, after all, hadn't said proper farewells to him/her either.

Such a complicated story, seemingly written so simply!  

And what are we, Jewish readers of today, to infer from this tale?  Had such a person as s/he really existed, his/her name might be listed as a "Righteous Gentile" by Yad Vashem.  But how righteous was s/he?  What was the quality of mercy?